Continuous-wave VECSEL Raman laser with tunable lime-yellow-orange output

We report a compact CW KGW Raman laser with intracavity nonlinear mixing, pumped by the intracavity field of a VECSEL. By temperature tuning an intracavity LBO crystal, we obtained two separate tunable emissions bands, namely 548.5 - 566 nm for sum-frequency-generation (SFG) of the fundamental and Stokes wavelengths, and 577.5 - 596 nm for second-harmonic-generation (SHG) of the Stokes wavelength. The maximum output powers for SFG and SHG were 0.8 W @ 560 nm and 0.52 W @ 592.5 nm, with corresponding diode-to-visible optical conversion efficiencies of 4.2% and 2.9%. These preliminary results show strong potential for expanding the spectral coverage of VECSEL lasers.